We Don’t Handle Change Well

Now that we’ve announced our plans for our 2012 stadium tour, we asked you to tell us which trip you were most excited to read about. Of 5 votes, 3 of you chose Atlanta and 2 of you chose Toronto. No one seems to care about DC.

Now…on to the good stuff. So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, good night, Jose Reyes! The self-absorbed shortstop signed a 6-year contract earlier this week with the Miami Marlins worth $106 million. According to King A-hole, uh, we mean, Reyes, he wanted to remain in New York, however “they didn’t make a real offer. So that means they don’t want me there.” The Mets offered a deal that is believed to have been worth 5 years and $80 million. Sorry, Reyes. This wasn’t about staying in New York. You wanted the money. Or dinero, if that helps you understand better. For the first time in years, the Mets made a good business decision. Reyes will probably play up to his potential during his first season just to show the Marlins that he wasn’t a mistake. In the following seasons, he’ll resort back to the laziness and I-Don’t-Give-a-F*ck attitude that he displayed in New York the last time he signed a big contract. Then in his 6^th and final year, he’ll play his so-called heart out and some other team will be stupid enough and excited enough to shoot their load and give him more money. Thank you, Mets for doing the right thing.

Another addition to the Marlins is Mark Buehrle, who might be leaving The Windy City, but isn’t going for a complete change. Buehrle will be reunited with manager Ozzie Guillen in Miami. Tired of waiting for Albert Pujols to make a decision, the Marlins pulled their offer and turned their sights on pitching. Hence, the addition of Buehrle. Buehrle’s contract includes a 4 years and $191 million. Hopefully, spending money like it’s going out of style pays off for the Marlins because paying for a new stadium and new roster costs a pretty penny and if this endeavor fails miserably, it’s just gonna get awkward and ugly.

David Ortiz will be returning to the Red Sox as their designated hitter. On Wednesday, Ortiz accepted salary arbitration which binds him to the team for at least another year. They’ll continue to work toward a multi-year contract potentially until February, but for now, Big Papi is at least returning for the 2012 season.

On Thursday, MAJOR changes went down. The Marlins may have stopped sweet talking Pujols in order to get him into the sack, but the Angels stepped right in and swept him off his feet! Pujols signed a 10-year, $254 million contract, making him the second highest paid baseball player in history and the third player to break the $200 million barrier. The Angels also signed pitcher CJ Wilson (who happens to be pretty darn cute) for a deal reportedly worth 5 years and $77.5 million.

The Diamondbacks dealt one of their top pitching prospects to the A’s in exchange for pitchers Trevor Cahill and Craig Breslow. Clearly, the A’s have decided to roll over and play dead this season, conceding the AL West to the Angels and hoping for a brighter future in the seasons to come.

What have the Yankees and Mets done? Absolutely nothing. Hooray!

Thanks in part to the number of changes that went down this week, it’s been pretty stressful for us. You can’t just dump all of this on us without any sort of preparation. You have to ease us into change! Ball players are so selfish sometimes.

The Wright Stache

Before Serena came down with Yellow Fever and left us with a BS blog of baseball notes, we had asked which of Scott Boras’ unemployed would you hire. 4 of you are actually willing to pay $1 for all three of the smelly jerk offs. We understand the draw of a good bargain, but do you understand that you’d have to deal with 3 a-holes, one of them resembling an ape and another one who refuses to bathe on a regular basis? For a $1, you might as well go to the Dollar Tree and buy a Snickers bar. It’d be a better investment. 5 of you voted for Andruw Jones, which honestly flabbergasts us to no end. Exactly what do you think you’ll get out of him? Did you pick him because the Yankees signed him? We assure you that we don’t understand the Yankees on this one either. 2 intelligent beings voted for none of them because they’re old hags. No one voted for Manny. Because he smells. And we’re pretty sure he has lice. No one voted for Johnny either, but he looks like he actually showers so…

You might be wondering what in the hell we were talking about when we referenced “The Wright Stache” a few weeks ago. The Wright Stache is a website that might surpass us in terms of insanity and ridiculousness…which of course means that it brings us utter joy. Basically the entire concept of this site is to get David Wright to grow a mustache because it will guarantee a Championship for the Mets because “the mustache has mojo.” Oh, yes. That is a direct quote from the website. We kid you not. They’ve even gone so far as to create a video to inspire the mustache phenomenon. It’s literally the most magical video we’ve ever seen. Literally. We do not exaggerate. It’s more magical than all of the Harry Potter films and books combined. Yes. THAT magical.

Thanks to The Wright Stache, we felt obligated to do a little research of our own. Do the creators of The Wright Stache have something here? Do mustached lips dominate the Championship pool? We went to Google for answers. First, we looked up the list of Championship baseball teams since 1975 (because we’re lazy and didn’t feel like going all the way back to the beginning). Then…we counted mustaches/beards and compared the total to the number of mustaches/beards of the losing team.

We know what you’re thinking. “Wow, you really looked up the team photos of the World Series opponents for the last 35 years??? That must’ve taken you forever!!” It did…which is why we stopped that strategy pretty quickly. Instead, we chose team photos randomly from each decade. Unfortunately, there were times when an actual team photo wasn’t feasible (turns out that Google Images ISN’T infallible after all) and we had to improvise.

We begin in 1977 with the New York Yankees who defeated the Los Angeles Dodgers literally and in mustache count. In the team photos, the champions showed 13 mustaches while the Dodgers only had 7.

On to the 1979 Pirates who defeated the Orioles with 20 friggin’ mustaches, making them the hairiest of this bunch and earning them TBB Super Hero of the Week. The Orioles only mustered 7.

The Phillies defeated the Royals in the 1980 World Series. Phillies’ facial hair count was 15. The Royals? Just 7.

We all remember the Bill Buckner debacle in 1986, but did anyone notice that in the Mets’ team photo of that year, there were 14 hairy faces? And only 4 for the losing Red Sox? Hmmm….

The Yankees came from behind to defeat the defending champs Braves in 1996. The reason? Come from behind playing and money pitching? Negative, our friends. It was probably the fact that the Yanks had 9 furries to the Braves’ 6.

In 2004, the Red Sox not only committed a hate crime against the Yankees in the ALCS, but they also blew the Cardinals out of the water in the facial hair competition. The results? 7-2.

In the photos we found for comparison of our most recent World Series contenders, the Giants and Rangers were tied with 5 furry faces each. How did we determine the winner? Brian Wilson has a Mohawk AND a beard. Clearly that trumps just having a beard. And before you bitch that the picture we used for the Giants isn’t a legitimate team photo, we’d like to point out that we used a photo in the same format for the Rangers. We couldn’t FIND proper team photos for them, okay??

It appears as though the results are conclusive. The Wright Stache definitely seems to have a brilliant and scientifically proven theory here. Naked lips apparently do NOT win championships.

Note: Our statistics might be slightly skewed as we were forced to count hair in several blurry old photos. It is entirely possible that on some occasions, we counted an upper lip shadow as a mustache (though we ASSURE you that this was not the case with the Pirates. They legitimately had 20 mustaches).

Baseball Notes:
The A’s have agreed to a 1 year/$1.4 million contract with the cute smarty pants, Craig Breslow, avoiding arbitration.

According to Brian Cashman, if Derek Jeter doesn’t last at short stop for his entire 4-year contract (or beyond?), he’d be best suited for centerfield. Jeter’s currently 36 years old, which puts him at 40 by the end of his contract. Short stop requires a lot of range and it’s understandable to plan for a decline in ability as Jeter ages. But centerfield? The outfield position that requires the most range? Does that make sense? Well, apparently Cashman likes his “corners” (infield and outfield) “to have power,” which is why he’d choose to shift Jeter to center as opposed to right or left. However, regardless of this kind of talk, Cashman assured us that “Jeter’s our shortstop, period.”

Rays’ outfielder Rocco Baldelli has retired and accepted a position with the team as a “special assistant.” Pardon us, but that title sounds a little dirty, dirty. Sorry…we’ll return to the story at hand. Baldelli has spent 6 of his 7 major league seasons with the Rays and in his new role he’ll be involved in scouting and player development. Baldelli had been diagnosed in 2008 with having a mitochondrial disorder which causes muscle fatigue. This condition combined with a variety of injuries caused him to miss all or parts of 4 seasons. In 519 career games played with Tampa Bay and Boston, Baldelli hit .278, 60 home runs, and 262 RBI’s.